Architects in action
Whether it’s working with mayors, collaborating with filmmakers, or tackling key issues like rising water, natural disasters, sustainability, and housing, architects are leading the way.
Chicago Ideas
Architects worked with children and adults to imagine better, safer communities and schools at Chicago Ideas Week.
The Future of Affordable Housing
Architects are using modular design to create more cost-effective housing – changing the future of building in the process.
Civic Leaders
Get connected with architects in your city.
AIA Film Challenge
Watch the 2018 winners and finalists.
Designing a Safer School
How architects are working with communities to create more secure campuses.
Find a local architect
Search for and connect with an architect in your community.
Civic I/O at SXSW
Architects and mayors came together to imagine the cities of the future.
Rebuilding an Island
A visionary architect teams with Tesla and a hurricane-ravaged community in Puerto Rico to rewrite the region’s future.
Architects’ guide to civic engagement
If you’re an architect, learn how to position yourself as a trusted advisor in your community.
What is a community design charrette?
By Kathleen M. O’Donnell
Throughout the second half of the 20th century, practices of community participation and equitable development entered mainstream design processes giving rise to a new generation of socially-conscious architects and designers that shape the world around us.
Read more >
Communities and designers team up to revive storefronts across the US
By Kathleen M. O’Donnell
Despite the shift toward big box stores and online retail giants leading into the 21st century, small businesses remain the cornerstone of many neighborhood blocks and main streets, serving communities of all sizes.
Read more >
A new bell rings for affordable housing
By Kathleen M. O’Donnell
When students walked out the doors of North Philadelphia’s Spring Garden School for the last time, many of them had no idea that their beloved school would lay vacant for almost 30 years. They also had no idea that in 2017, those doors would reopen for a new group of individuals as the Lural Lee Blevins Veterans Center, an affordable housing development.
Read more >